Journey to Babel – Amanda's Meditation
by
aurado
Summary: Prior to Sarek's surgery, when any hope of recovery seems vain, Amanda thinks of her family and of her failures. Bittersweet memories of the past.
Chapter 1
Upon the insistent request of the Chief Medical Officer, Amanda had left her husband's bedside and stood motionless on the observation deck. She wasn't observing anything really. She simply stood there, her hand still stinging with the slap she had inflicted her son earlier that day.
It shouldn't be still burning, after such a considerable amount of time, but she could not avoid to distinctly feel the horrible physical sensation lingering there. And much more with it.
Pain. Anguish. Impotence. Anger. Remorse. Guilt. Failure.
Pain was the least she could feel when watching her ashayam, the love of her life, suffering and struggling on the brink of death.
Anguish was subtly shooing hope away, while her heart started anticipating the emptiness, the desperation that would follow her Adun's departing, should McCoy's therapy fail.
A grievous sense of impotence kept assaulting her for failing in convincing her son to save his father. She feared to have lost any connection with her only son. Usually alien to profanity, at that moment she felt the right thing to describe it all was that she had screwed the whole thing up.
Inadequacy and grief fueled her anger. Anger at herself. Anger at Spock's apparent impassibility. She knew it had been apparent, but to her, his resolution had felt like solid rock.
But, only moments later, remorse and guilt flooded again her soul. And she felt so base and undeserving for striking and hurting Spock, her Spock, the child she had longed for so much, who had been fighting for his right to be and to live, since the earliest instants of his existence. The son she had so many times wished to console, to soothe, to protect from the harshness of life.
Such wild thoughts, the unmerciful stream of consciousness, unhurriedly unravelling through her mind, were also slowly bruising and poisoning her self esteem, her judgement on past and present things. She knew to be weak, to have neglected food and rest and struggled to react.
She desperately wanted to chase the next thought well away from her mind, but it took eventually shape in a most feared word, which found inescapably its way to the surface of her conscience and stood there, in her drained mind, written in bright capital letters.
FAILURE.
The word tormented and mocked her, assuming the hundreds faces of those who had declared her crazy, when she had joined her life with Sarek's.
Those who had tried to dissuade her, those who had openly censored her, those who had merely turned away disgusted, those who had paled and shivered, those who had needed an effort to congratulate, those who had giggled and talked behind her back and those who had called her a Terran whore, all of them labelling her marriage as improper or shameful and anyway doomed.
Were they right?
Oh, God, it hurt so...she had never thought, not even in the throes of pon farr, not even in her long barrenness, to admit failure in choosing Sarek.
But, today, her husband dying, her son so distant, her good faith screamed that reality had to be acknowledged.
"What is is", Sarek would have certainly reminded her. C'thia. The reality of things.
And so this failure had to be acknowledged and accepted
Failure for choosing in her youth a path that was in itself revolutionary… and new… and thrilling… and fulfilling, but that had ultimately led to wounds difficult to heal. Still open and bleeding after years.
A husband estranged from his own son. A son who could not belong anywhere, rejected by half his heritage, rejected by his father, refused and humiliated by his bondmate and bride….accepted by his human friends, but, at the same time, keeping himself distant and aloof from humanity.
"Humans smile with so little provocation" Spock had stated just a few hours before… as if he were no human at all. Not even half human. As if he were not her son.
But she could read him, in spite of all his control. And today she had read, once more, hidden pain and regret, when he had told her he hadn't come home for four years to avoid meeting his father.
And in spite of those many years, in spite of Spock's resignation, in spite of Sarek's stubbornness, in spite of everything, a reminiscence kept coming to her mind unrecalled.
It was the memory of a child, seen through his bedroom door left ajar, a bowl of black shining hair on his head, sitting at his desk, his mind absorbed in concentration, his hands moving rapidly on a screen.
Beside him a glimpse of a taller person, eyes perfectly matching the child's, focused on the same screen, sitting close enough to glance at the computer and to touch the pad every now and then, adding a contribution .
The adult would sometimes nod, some other speak to the child, too low for her to catch the exact words, but steadily and patiently. The child would sometimes raise his eyes to the adult's and answer a question or state a hypothesis, equally placidly. She managed to guess they were talking about codes, the most recent of the child's interests.
And while she peeped through the ajar door, there was contentment humming through her marital bond.
And protection and participation and connection and…paternal satisfaction.
Spock was five at the time, he hadn't begun attending a public school yet and was being instructed privately at home.
Humiliation, rejection, prejudice had not entered his life yet.
His parents were proud of him. The both of them.
"I'd prefer another guide", Sarek had coldly declared, regal in his ambassadorial robes, at Captain Kirk's proposal of a tour of the ship led by his First Officer. This time, his gaze had carefully avoided his son's eyes, had in fact almost avoided his whole person.
As if he did not exist. As if Sarek were not a father anymore.
Amanda, at Sarek's side, their fingers joined in the ozh'esta, had felt her heart ache.
But her smile had not faltered.
To be continued...Amanda's meditation does not end here and other memories are ready to be published, if you liked these ones
Author's Note: This is my first fanfiction and I am not a native speaker. Moreover, the draft was not supervised by any English mother tongue beta-reader. Please condone my blunders, which, in spite of my carefulness, you will surely find in the text. Review and encourage me. Thank you. Aurado